The only real biography on the Dowager Empress - a missed opportunity - Rated 
Much has been written about Nicolas II and his family. His mother the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna features in all these books. However, she was never really subject to a proper biography, at least in the English language. So I was pretty happy that this book was written.
The Empress' s life could be Holywood stuff: a little princess from Danemark, not very well off, gets engaged to the handsome young Heir to the Russian Throne, he dies before the marriage but throne and bride is taken over by his younger brother. He becomes new the new Czar Alexander III, after his father Alexander II. has been torn to pieces by a terrorist bomb. Dagmer, now with the Orthodox Russian name Maria Feodorovna is his Empress. She dominates as an lively, elegant and bejuwelled consorts the court life. Then fate strucks again: the Emperor dies young and the son and heir Nicolas II. is quite unfit to rule. It all ends in the Russian Revolution. The Empress survives, but looses family, throne and country. She finds herself back in Denmark where she eventual dies. In the meantime sie has been re-burried in Russia.
But well who really was that person, this Dagmar, this Maria Feodorovna, this Empress and Dowager Empress? What was her role during the final years of the Russian Empire? The authors give us a lot of information and inside, but there is still something missing. It seems to be that she never really got to the bottom of her personality.Of course, that is difficult, but I believe that makes the very difference between a good and decent biography and a very good or superb one. The authors have to create a vision of that personality, even if one can argue about this, that and the other. They have to show the reader who they believe this person was. But this very decisive point is missing here. It is kind of a missed opportunity.
Having said this it is still a good biography and worthwhile reading as it is really the only biography one can read. But this will and should not be "the last word" on the Dowager Empress.
Disappointment - Rated 
I spent quite a lot of time hunting this book down and paid quite a bit of money to obtain it. That, I admit, will color this review.
My first disappointment was the fact that despite new sources of information, the author didn't let Marie's voice come through. NO letters are quoted. The author's interpretations are paramount. We are TOLD many things (Marie felt, Marie thought) but we don't hear HER. I was looking forward to learning more about Marie's true feelings for her husband and his for her, but -- nothing. They seem to have made the very difficult adjustment of being married after the death of Tsarvitch Nicholas Alexandrovich, with only minor problems per this author.
I know from other sources that Marie was a very selfish, almost a bad mother, in the sense that she smothered her children with affection and tried to make them dependent on her, yet when they couldn't live up to expectations, she was frustrated with them and treated them badly for it. Nicholas and her daughter Olga suffered through this particularly. But again, no letters, no outside sources are used constructively to show this here.
And very oddly, Marie is referred to as Dagmar throughout the book. Her family nickname was Minnie; she was officially Marie Fedorovna. This oddity makes Marie even more distant to the reader.
The author writes competently enough, but there's no "oomph". Considering all the letters and fresh Russian sources that were available to her, this book is just a disappointment to read.
This is the only English-language biography of Marie yet available, so I suppose someone with an interest in the last Royal family of Russia must own it...but believe me, if John van der Kiste or Charlotte Zeepvat ever wrote a biography of Marie, I would jettison this one & get theirs.
Great grandson - Rated 
I think readers will find this an enjoyable read. She is my great grandmother twice as I only have three sets of great grandparents. She being re-interned in St.Petersburg only the other day.
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